Bemused

I could have called this Quote of the Day but the day is still young and there are many more pronouncements on the riots and looters still to come. This statement though, from Steven Kavanagh, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met Police, has me puzzled and I couldn’t let it pass without comment:

“The Met does not wish to use baton rounds but if it gets put into a position that it needs to protect the people and the property and the lives of Londoners, [then] we will do so.”

Perhaps I have a different idea of what policing is supposed to be about but I thought the prime purpose of any police force was to do just that – to protect the people and the property and the lives – so where does the “if” come in? Perhaps I’m reading something into it that isn’t there or perhaps it’s a Freudian slip that shows the senior bosses at the Met really have lost the plot.

Kavanagh is on LBC at the moment saying that the police will be having words with residents of those communities that patrolled and protected their own streets yesterday.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."